Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

During the end of the 3rd Century, the Playwright Plautus wrote many of the first Roman comedies. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a musical comedy film adaptation of Plautus's comedies.Set in ancient Rome, many aspects of Roman theatre, including stock characters, were included in the film’s production. While the film is based off of multiple comedies, Plautus's Pseudolus character Calidorus is nearly identical to the film’s Hero. During the time Pseudolus was written, the Crisis of the Third Century led to up to 25% of Roman population being comprised of slaves(Southern). Of the many stock characters Platus included in his comedies, Calidorus/Hero, the son of Pseudolus’s owner and the stock character adulescens, best

Senex is the father of Hero, who is a Roman senator. The brothel ower character is Marcus Lycus who is the buyer/seller of beautiful women in the area. He is in this business for the money. Miles Glorious is the braggart solider, who is the captain of the Roman Army. The young maiden is Philia, who is still a virgin and the girl who Hero is in love with. Hero’s father also shows an interest in Philia as Philia thinks that Senex is the captain. Pseudolous is the slave that wants his freedom and works with Hero to try to get Philia to be Hero’s partner. Hysterium is the clever slave, because he has lied many times to keep things in order. Domina is the wife who is very

Shakespeare once said “the course of true love never did run smooth”. Shakespeare’s story, “Much Ado About Nothing”, is about two couples and their will to stay together through it all. One couple, Beatrice and Benedick, attempt to overcome the complications of admitting their love for one another. The other couple, Hero and Claudio, struggle to know what is true and false about rumors that spread around about their significant other. The book features pairs of unlikely friends based on their different traits like Hero and Beatrice as well as Claudio and Benedick. In “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare, Hero is a foil to Beatrice because of their distinct personalities, contrasting opinions, and differentiating actions.

• The story begins with explanation of an old law that was directed towards men's daughters as well as introduction to Egeus and Hermia whom both live in the city of Athens. These are the main characters.

Jez Butterworth’s ‘Jerusalem’ creates a comic vision focusing on the ambiguities, turmoil and hypocrisies of the society presented on stage. Butterworth focuses on the characters’ degeneracies in which the form of humour tends to be the exposure of their unruly behaviour and their reluctance to conform to social norms. “The most basic difference between comedy and tragedy lies in its central characters, who are not heroes, and often, as with Shakespeare’s Falstaff, are anti-heroic” The key character Johnny

“Be Right down.” I text back as I pull open the glass door to the aged Orpheum theatre. Ambling into the lobby the familiar buttery scent of popcorn mixed with soda and old wood wraps around me and whispers memories of the last time I was here. After standing in line I check in I leave the lobby following the path etched into my mind from years of performing here. As I walk through the antique doors into the auditorium, I am struck once again by the beauty of the ancient theater.

Commedia dell'arte played a crucial role in the history of Western theater, “its underlying satire and irony ultimately shaping the development of comedy on the dramatic as well as the lyric stages," (Fisher 17). This paper will discuss, first, commedia dell'arte's satirical performances, their circumstances, and their original audience, and tell how this theatrical form became well-known throughout Western Europe. It then will discuss two enduring popular stage works: Sterbini and Rossini's opera buffa Il Barbieri di Siviglia, and Beaumarchais's satirical comedy Le Barbier de Séville ou la Précaution inutile of

Although Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is a form of Old Comedy, which satirizes the life of the polis, and Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday is a form of English renaissance comedy, both plays evoke the comic process of role reversals or inversion. Inversion creates humor through the mixing-up of expected hierarchies by placing the lower caste members of society on top. Thus, role reversals offer short term liberation by reimagining the way of life, which creates the possibility to mediate polarized interests. For example, in Lysistrata, Aristophanes exploits the status of women as social outsiders and inverts their role to construct an alternative model to civic government. In The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Simon Eyre, a shoemaker, becomes

Also, the comic operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan (1871-1896) were clever, tuneful and perfectly created – prompting new models of dramatic generation. After Gilbert and Sullivan, the performance center in Britain and the United States was re-characterized – first by impersonation, at that point by development. The best transformation in the American melodic venue up to that time came in 1927 with Show Boat, by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern. Here we go to a totally new sort - the musical play as recognized from musical parody. Finally, came the joining of song, comicality and creative production numbers into a solitary and inseparable imaginative element. Here, at last, was a production with a predictable and trustworthy story line, dependable ambiance, and three-dimensional

The play starts with two roman officials, Murellus and Flavius, who order many commoners in the middle of the day to return back to work. Many of these people are in the streets celebrating Caesar's triumph against Pompey. Murellus reminds the commoners, a cobbler, in particular, of the time when they used to cheer for Pompey’s victorious returns from battle, however, due to recent differences in opinion,

“A Restoration comedy is like an eighteenth-century sitcom; it’s entertaining” (MacKenzie, “Behn”). However, the similarities between the two genres are more far-reaching than their equal entertainment value. For example, the cast of William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy, “The Country Wife,” consists of some central characters that are strikingly similar to those in the cast of the modern situation comedy, Seinfeld. Harry Horner from “The Country Wife” and George Costanza from Seinfeld both fit the male “wit” character type. Likewise, Lady Fidget, one of Horner’s lovers, and another woman, who’s one of Costanza’s fleeting lovers, both fit the female “wit” character type. Through the

For the last few weeks the topic of discussion has been Greek and Roman theatre. From dramatic situations, like death of a beloved pet, all the way to basic improv this lesson has been intense. New vocabulary words, a greater feeling of confidence and a more in depth knowledge of theatre was given to us. Which allows us to understand and explain the legacy of greek and roman theater and the impact it had on today’s entertainment.

This is a must watch Broadway show that makes your fine, terrible, or even boring day, an absolute blast. The Play That Goes Wrong has finally made its way to America and right at the heart of New York City near Times Square at the Lyceum Theatre. Therefore, the experience is a win-win situation for the audience. The Lyceum Theatre’s architecture is astonishing as it is filled with ornaments, I also realized the letter ‘L’ around the theater, but the most interesting fact is that it is a landmark. It has a proscenium stage while the audience is in the orchestra, balcony, or the mezzanine seats, like where I sat, and there is barely any space if you are a tall person. My seat was near the far end of mezzanine, I couldn’t see a part of the left side of the stage, so I found myself bending sideways to see what was going on, but I saw nothing. I found the side stage lights and a side balcony blocking my view and yet I had a great time.

Sometimes appearing as there is no plot to the play, the Theatre of the Absurd had non-linear plot developments and went against general theatre conventions. Things that were considered a structure of human life such as time, place and identity were often distorted to an extent where the characters became confused on where they were or who they were, and therefore easily fell out of the ‘rhythm’ of normal life and the way that people generally live.

play has the perfect Aristotelian tragic plot consisting of peripateia, anagnorisis and catastrophe; it has the perfect tragic character that suffers from happiness to misery due to his hamartia (tragic flaw) and the play evokes pity and fear that produces the tragic effect, catharsis (a purging of emotion).